Google Escapes Breakup of Ad Tech Empire in Major Antitrust Ruling

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has escaped one of the biggest remedies sought by U.S. antitrust regulators against its advertising business. A federal judge in Virginia rejected the Justice Department's request to force Google to sell AdX, its online advertising exchange.

The ruling does not erase Google's legal problems. Judge Leonie Brinkema previously found that Google held illegal monopolies in publisher ad servers and ad exchanges and had unlawfully tied publishers to AdX.

Instead of ordering a breakup, Brinkema accepted most of the behavioral remedies proposed in the case. The decision is significant because AdX sits at the center of Google's ad-tech infrastructure, where publishers pay a 20% fee to sell ads through real-time auctions.

The business itself is relatively small compared with Google Search and YouTube, representing only 4.1% of Google's revenue and 1.5% of operating profit in 2020, according to Wedbush estimates.